Jane Stillwater is a freelance journalist, war correspondent, blogger, political Cassandra and author of "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," now available on Amazon.com. Her latest motto is "Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world."

Saturday, April 02, 2011

The new definition of crazy: Our wars on Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq & drugs

Recently I've become a fan of ABC's new television show "Off the Map," and last week's plot featured a schizophrenic woman who kept imagining things that didn't really exist in the real world. Inside of her own mind, however, it was a different story -- and, as far as she was concerned, the scary phantoms who peopled her own mental world really did exist. "What I see IS real," she kept sobbing.

And, apparently, all the scary phantoms and bogeymen who seem to people the minds of diagnosed schizophrenics have also been living inside of the minds of America's current leaders as well. Everywhere from the Pentagon to Wall Street, it appears that a whole bunch of crazy and false images are also running through our leaders' brains. "All our wars are humanitarian wars," they keep telling us. "All our wars are necessary and good. And we are also winning all of these wars." Sounds crazy to me.

In the last several decades, Americans have been sold a whole laundry-list of military, financial and/or moral disasters, such as our wars on far-off God-forsaken places like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Libya, Serbia, Grenada, Somalia, Guatemala, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, El Salvador, Africa, Latin America and Iraq; and we've also been sold a bunch of wars on various miscellaneous things such as Terror and Drugs. And don't forget all those other miscellaneous undeclared wars that are also being sold to us daily -- such as corporatists' undeclared wars on unions, sick people, infrastructure, women, school children and what's left of our American middle class.

Just look at this list. It's basically loony-tunes. To a sane person, it would appear that our leaders have declared war on practically every single person in the world but themselves. That's craziness. Just what the freak is going ON inside of these people's minds?

And while all these horrendous and insane disasters keep on draining America's treasury -- approximately seven trillion dollars has gone down the drain so far, a nest egg that we'll never see again -- still our leaders keep on trying to sell us even more of these loser wars, telling us over and over again that they are not only moral, necessary and affordable, but that they are actually keeping us safe and that we are actually WINNING these wars. How schizophrenic is that?

"What we see IS real," our leaders keep sobbing -- just like that crazy woman on TV.

Is it really normal human behavior to spend trillions of dollars on bombing, torturing and murdering untold numbers of strangers? Women and children and babies who we don't even know?

Is it really normal human behavior to elevate weapons of mass destruction to the position of becoming America's top national product? Especially in these modern times of recession and need?

Sounds more like schizophrenia than sanity to me.

For instance, let's take a look at that ever-popular War on Drugs. America is losing the War on Drugs. So far, we have spent untold billions on this craziness and yet the results are obviously certifiably abnormal -- to say the least. Mexico and Columbia have become armed fortresses, while here at home Americans by the millions are losing their brain functions -- and/or their lives -- because of unregulated street drugs that are being cut with everything from corn starch to shoe polish.

We are twenty or more long years into this "war" and nothing has changed -- except that the rich are getting richer. According to the Guardian newspaper, "[The illegal] drug industry has two products: money and suffering. On one hand, you have massive profits and enrichment. On the other, you have massive suffering, misery and death. You cannot separate one from the other."http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangsWhat kind of alternative reality do our leaders live in if they actually think that this kind of behavior is okay?

And let's look at the war on Iraq next. In "Off the Map," the schizophrenic woman runs into the village marketplace and starts trying to kill people. On the TV show, this sort of behavior is presumed to be clinically insane and the good guys rush in to stop her. Yet when this same behavior gets repeated again and again on a massive scale in Iraq, no one seems to be calling it crazy. Why not?

Next, let's attempt to get inside the distorted minds of those American leaders who actually think that we are winning the war on Af-Pak. Yeah right. If you think that spending billions per month on a ten-year-old "war" that kills thousands of women and children living on the other side of the world and still keeps slogging on and on and on with no end-game in mind or in sight is called "winning," then you are way out of touch with reality here as well.

If anyone were to start exhibiting this type of behavior on the streets of any small town in America, they would immediately have several large men in white coats running after them with straight jackets.

How crazy can it be to spend trillions of dollars on slaughtering human beings on the other side of the planet -- while huge numbers of our own children here in America cry themselves to sleep at night because they are homeless and hungry due to the huge deficit caused by these "wars"? And we are calling Muammar Gaddafi crazy?

Isn't Einstein's definition of insanity, "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"? Yet our leaders, both Democrat and Republican, keep plunging us into loser war after loser war even after every one of their wars so far have been unnecessary, avoidable and psychopathic disasters.

Perhaps it's time to do something different for a change, something that actually works.

Perhaps it's time for Americans to switch paradigms here and start looking at our leaders from this new "Off the Map" perspective -- and to finally begin to realize that if America's leaders are incapable of keeping us out of all these useless, inhuman and unnecessary loser wars, then they are the ones who are acting crazy. Nuts. Bonkers. Bananas. Looney-tunes. Fruitcakes. Certifiable. Off the map.

And also, I just gotta ask, why is the rest of America putting up with all this craziness from our leadership time after time -- and continuing to keep electing these obvious lunatics to office. Am I the only one who can see the insanity of this? I'd hate to think that I was the only sane person left in America.

PS: Speaking of crazy murderers, I just filmed an audition tape to send off to an up-coming reality show called "Get a Clue". The show will be similar to some popular murder-mystery board game -- and I'm trying out for the part of the innocent-looking little old lady who nobody would ever suspect of being the killer. Here's my audition tape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Xh9v2YHJA

PPS: Speaking of financial craziness and war, for the last three or four years I've been waging a losing battle against the Department of Labor in order to receive federal workers compensation benefits regarding injuries to my right foot and knees received while on the job. And why is my battle with the D.O.L. proving to be so hard to win? I suspect that it is because our leaders have been squandering far too much of America's money on murdering women and children in Juarez, Kabul, Tripoli and Baghdad, and are now cutting corners here at home so they can still keep their war-profiteers friends happy. And that's totally crazy too. Guys, it's time to get your priorities straight. America first!

Anyway, here are the latest details with regard to my struggles with the D.O.L and workers' comp:

After I went to see two excellent independent podiatry and orthopedic specialists who both agreed that my injuries were job-related, I then went off to see the U.S. Department of Labor's own doctor and he also told me that I was injured on the job. All sides agreed. Clearly a cut-and-dried case, right? Not exactly.

A few months later, this very same D.O.L. doctor then submits another report telling me the exact opposite -- that I was NOT injured on the job. Then this very same D.O.L. doctor gets his certificate to practice medicine in the State of California revoked, allegedly because he is a bad doctor. And then the D.O.L. itself has the chutzpah to turn down my case once again, apparently because this same crumby former D.O.L. doctor now suddenly knows what he was talking about -- but my own two excellent independent specialists don't. Huh?

And now I gotta go out and file yet another appeal with the D.O.L. Dudes! Wouldn't it have been cheaper all around to just have given me my earned-the-hard-way workers comp benefits in the first place? We're only talking about the price of some orthopedic shoes here, one arthroscopy and seven months of back pay. Geez Louise.

For the price of making the quality of my life 100% better, it would only cost the same as approximately one leather bucket-seat in just one of some war-profiteer's fleet of BMWs, or perhaps just a case of French champagne for some corporatist CEO who recently got bailed out by Congress. Chump-change money to them, direly important to me.

PPPS: Here's even another example of craziness. Corporatists are so much more of a danger to America and have done so much more damage to our country than terrorists have ever done -- including the nightmare of 9-11 -- and yet no one seems to be getting on their case about that damage or screening for them at airports or even torturing them to confess or sending them off to Guantanamo. In fact, America seems to be even in LOVE with these creeps.

In addition, more damage has been done to America by corporatists in terms of job losses than any illegal immigrants could ever possibly have done. Just think of all the tens of millions of jobs that corporatists have stolen and outsourced from America, including probably yours. And yet you never see any corporatists shunned or jailed or deported. Why not?

Not only that, but all-too-many corporatists don't even pay any freaking taxes here at all because the corporations that they own -- even though they have been happily granted all the same kinds of rights of personhood that real Americans have -- aren't even American citizens at all, having fled abroad in order to avoid paying taxes.

These corporations/persons are now officially living abroad and have chosen some foreign country over us? Well, fine. However. If these same corporations/persons ever try to sneak back across our borders to get work in America again, that will make them wetbacks! So let's sic the Migra on them and send them all back to the Caymans where they belong.PPPPS: Here's a crazy-but-funny video from my son Joe: http://brightspectrum.tumblr.com/post/4275752800/after-the-car-crash-and-the-burned-down-house-a